


The Sun That Never Sets

by possiblewitch



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Beach Holidays, Beach Volleyball, Beaches, Boys In Love, Brazil, First Love, Flying, Love, Love Confessions, Love at First Sight, M/M, Minor Oikawa, Minor Oikawa Tooru - Freeform, Pro Volleyball Player Bokuto Koutarou, Pro Volleyball Player Hinata Shouyou, Pro Volleyball Player Miya Atsumu, Pro Volleyball Player Sakusa Kiyoomi, Volleyball, Walks On The Beach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:29:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22414750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possiblewitch/pseuds/possiblewitch
Summary: Rio de Janeiro, where Atsumu and Bokuto want to enjoy heat and days without practises. Where Sakusa is roped in and dragged along to a hotel with only one room, and goes on morning runs to keep up some sort of regular training.Rio de Janeiro, where he runs along the beach, stays for longer than he should, and falls in love.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 15
Kudos: 641





	The Sun That Never Sets

**Author's Note:**

> I don't normally write in present tense, but I wanted to try something different for this fic! If there's any mistakes, I'm really sorry, and I'll be combing through it later to fix them up! 
> 
> I hope you like it anyway :)

**_Volleyball is a sport where you're always looking up._ **

He is looking up. He has to, because nothing else on the beach commands his attention quite like the game in front of him.

Sakusa Kiyoomi really, _really_ hates beach volleyball. Indoor volleyball was reliable, with its hard floors and the still air on the court. Your jumps were always going to be on the same surface. If you landed on the floor and hurt yourself, then you'd learn to keep your balance. There wasn't any wind to interrupt the toss and play with the ball. Indoor volleyball was consistent and precise- everything that beach volleyball was not. Playing on the beach was unpredictable and chaotic- and there were probably whole hordes of bugs in the sand, too. Volleyball was for tall players, and the sand made you sink, lose speed, or both. Anyone who was short and had more than two brain cells should have looked at that sort of game and stayed far away from it.

Someone fumbles a receive on a powerful spike and the ball goes high. Sakusa winces, especially as he sees the height of the person who has to spike it. That's another thing about beach volleyball: there's only two people on each side of the court. But every critical thought in his head dies as the player stretches out his hands, runs, and _jumps_. 

It's higher than anything he's ever seen.

Sakusa can't see his face, but he knows that he's beautiful. He's just a shadow against the setting sun. But the way he leaps reminds him of an angel, a bird. The player is graceful, and he is _flying_ through the night sky. He might just be high enough to touch the stars. 

The wind suddenly hits him and the toss strays from his path. The spiker doesn't seem to care, and with power and elegance like that, who would? It doesn't matter that the wind is suddenly pushing it in the opposite direction: the ball is hit over the net and into the opposition's court below. It's like an act of God, and it's over far too quickly. His team celebrates, and shake hands with the others. The match must be over, then.

He stays by the trees for a little while longer, reliving the scene in his head. And then he turns around, ready to go back to his apartment.

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

They call him Ninja Shouyou.

It's definitely Japanese, although Sakusa admits that he's never seen this name matched with this person before. The people who regularly watch these matches yell his name as he makes a good receive or a powerful spike, and he turns to smile at them. He was right, before, when he said he was beautiful. He's beautiful when he's concentrating, when he's smiling, when his hat covers half his face and the shadows hide his eyes. 

He yells _Nice Kill!_ when his teammate spikes, and the locals clearly have no idea what that means, but they adopt the phrase and shout it back at him. Ninja Shouyou is a hero, here on the beach. And today he has a visitor.

They know each other. Shouyou clearly wasn't expecting to see this man, who first he calls _The Great King_ and then Oikawa, but he looks excited to see this stranger with wavy brown hair, and they play a game together. It must be the stranger's first game, because he trips and falls flat on his face. The wind blows, and the toss shakes. The people that he came with laugh before they go off on their own together. 

Sakusa watches the game, but his mind drifts to the teammates that dragged him here in the first place. Atsumu and Bokuto both begged their coach to let them go to Brazil, although he can't remember the reason why. Atsumu had claimed that Bokuto needed two supervisors- but by the time that they'd gotten on the plane, he'd learnt the unfortunate truth; his setter had _also_ wanted to go. He's not sure where they are now. Probably roaming the streets and buying useless things that they'll need a whole other bag for later.

Oikawa is dragging him down. They lose the match, but Shouyou doesn't seem to care. He wears a giddy smile on his face and they head down the street together, talking. Their opponents follow them, excited to claim their prizes, and Sakusa gets up to leave, walking in the opposite direction. If the short guy's going this early, there's no need for him to be here anymore.

When he gets to the beach again, they're playing. Oikawa's better this time. Every once in a while, he does something a little cool, and Shouyou jumps on it at the end of the rally. He's so hyperactive, so loud and energetic, a lot like _Bokuto_ , but it doesn't bother him. He's like Bokuto but better, and Sakusa finds himself wondering if the Black Jackals would be open to swapping him with this new beach ninja.

Their time here is almost up, and it's something he doesn't like to think about. They leave on Friday, only _days_ before the next volleyball tournament. One that _H_ _e_ will be participating in. The locals on the beach talk about it all the time. Shouyou mentioned it once when he was on the phone to someone called Pedro.

His phone rings. Yeah, yeah. He's coming.

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

Tryouts.

He's not supposed to be here- it's just supposed to be the coach, the captain, and maybe a couple of others. He was invited to watch, but he'd declined the offer with some disgust. Some players had laughed and Foster had just smiled and told him that he was still free to come if he changed his mind. He wouldn't be here if he wasn't looking for something in the gym.

Sakusa opens the door and slips in. Atsumu's the setter for the starting lineup, so he's here on the court. He looks sick of it all. 

"Toss me a high one!"

The next player is tall; he wears both the number 11 and a smug look on his face. He decides he hates him already, and it looks like the setter agrees. The next toss _is_ high, even though that's directly against the rules. Equal tosses for everyone, and all that jazz. The spiker hits the ball, but with all the power he was advertising, it barely reaches the middle of the court. Their ball boy runs over to get it, and tosses it over to Barnes.

"Toss me a high one too!"

The voice is familiar, and Sakusa's jaw drops as his eyes land on a familiar boy with a mop of orange hair on his head. He has no height and sharp brown eyes. He commands the court- not that Atsumu would know. He's busy sighing and muttering to himself about how this should be someone else's job. 

"There's _no way_ you could get a high toss!" It's number 11. "You're too short!"

"You can't be the ace if you can't create miracles!"

There's snickering amongst the potential members, but there's no time for discussion. Atsumu gives him a toss like he wants. It's as high as the last one, if not higher- possibly to discourage them from asking for high tosses- and Sakusa watches his face light up. His jumps haven't changed from those times on the beach. He wears a small smile of his own on his face as they watch the ball fly up to meet him. 

Shouyou hits the ball, and Sakusa fully expects it to be a cross shot onto the far side of the court- but it's not. The ball goes straight down with a flick of his wrist, and bounces back up with ease. The room is totally silent as he comes back down to the ground, and Atsumu can't even look at his spiker, the ball rolling to a stop in front of their ball boy.

"Your toss was so easy to hit, it was amazing! I thought I should try something different with it!"

Barnes is the first to react.

"What if you missed?'

He shrugs. "I wasn't going to."

Someone at the back whistles. _That was cool_ , they whisper, and they're right. He doesn't need to look to know that his coach and captain are looking at each other, wide smiles on their faces.

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

Sakusa has to look it up. He wouldn't dare mention the butterflies in his stomach to anyone else. They'd look at him as though as he was insane, and then tease him mercilessly for it afterwards. The result on all the search engines is the same. It's the same with different wording. The truth is in front of his face, and then he's wondering when they first started. 

He remembers it happened on the beach, too, but written it off as a disease and gotten himself checked as soon as he got home. Later, someone would tell him that he _had_ caught a disease in Rio, and it was called the love bug. No wonder he had no way to identify it as that: it had been the first time he'd ever caught it. The internet's vote was unanimous: he was head over heels for Hinata Shouyou. And it had all began with that jump.

It gives him chills, it gives him butterflies, and it fills him with absolute awe, because it was so easy to mistake him for prey when he is the ultimate predator instead. Thoughts of him fills his mind both day and night, and makes it so difficult to focus on anything other than him. Volleyball is the one exception: volleyball is when he can show off what he's capable of, and Hinata is always impressed, and he always gives him that bright, excited smile. 

There's a problem, of course. Atsumu never hesitates to call him prickly, like a sea urchin. He always fits better with Hinata, teasing and joking with him so easily. Maybe he's been taking tips from Wakatoshi, because Sakusa can feel the seeds of doubt planted in his mind. Maybe this love was destined to be unrequited, because he's so standoffish and awkward. 

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

It had occurred to him that if he really is as prickly as Atsumu claims, then nobody will notice if Hinata suddenly stopped going near him. In fact, the setter will probably praise him for it- he can be an absolute _jerk_ sometimes. 

So now it is Monday. And Sakusa is sitting in his car, fidgeting. The heater's on, and the window's are fogging up. Hinata lives so far away from their gym, way on the other side of town. Nobody lives that far away, and everyone has a car: he, on the other hand, jogs. Every morning- even on mornings like this- and he still manages to be one first people here. He owns a spare copy of the gym key. He's the only one to be blessed with that kind of privilege.

He thinks he picked the right day to confess. Nobody's eager to show up to work on a Monday, especially after yesterday, which was warm for winter standards. Some people would be pulling themselves out of bed now. Others (Bokuto and Atsumu) would be sleeping through the ten alarms they would have set. Maybe they'd get here at 11. If they were lucky. 

_There_.

In the distance, he can see bright orange hair. Hinata always takes a bag with him, too. He always stuffs it full of food, his sportswear way at the bottom. Surely it's awkward to jog with? He realises he's never asked.

Sakusa waits a few minutes (half an hour) to gather his courage and head inside. Even though he jogged here, Hinata probably did the warm ups too, and then rushed around to set up everything. His passion for volleyball is unmatched. This, he's certain of. After all, it's only 7:30. Practise doesn't start until 9, and 10 on the weekends. But somehow, without fail, he always comes down at 7. He is forced back home when he's sick. There is nothing that could possibly sate his hunger for this sport, and _God_ , it's so mesmerizing to watch.

It's cold. Jesus, it's freezing. He's reluctantly pulling off his coat and shirt and scarf (It's so easy to get sick in winter!) to get dressed into his gym wear. But he has to do this fast, to get it over with. He has to do this fast, so he can confess before anyone else shows up and sees his embarrassing rejection. So he's shivering as he pulls on his shirt and shakily walks over to the door.

They're loud, and they echo through the silent room, so Hinata turns around immediately as he approaches him.

"Sakusa-san! Hey! You're here early! Do you want to practise spiking? I did some setting back in Rio, and I could definitely work on it more, so-"

Hinata hits him with one thing after another, but that's not new. The cold is freezing up his legs. It's making it difficult to walk and even to stand, so when Sakusa reaches him, he kind of just... collapses.

"Saku-"

"Hinata." He can see his breath in the gym, and it terrifies him a little. When you're cold, it's easier to get bugs. That's common knowledge: everyone gets sick when its winter, even though he tries to keep it away as much as possible. But that fear can wait. He'll deal with it later, when he's doing his warm ups and needs something to get his mind off of the pain.

"Hinata, please go out with me."

It's quiet. It's quiet for what seems like forever, and as he hears a door open, Sakusa realises he looks like he's about to propose. Not that he can pull himself out of it now. _Just say no. Hurry up and say no, so I can crawl away and suffer in a corner somewhere. Stop taking so_ long, _dammit!_

"Okay!"

He can't say anything. His jaw hangs open, and when he does say something it's kind of a meshing of sounds. Hinata laughs.

"Sorry for taking so long. I had to figure out if my brain was messing with me, since it's still morning and all that. I'm really glad you made the first move, though. I don't think I could ever have the guts to confess, unfortunately."

"Omi-kun! Why are you in such a incriminating position?"

It doesn't take much effort to whip around and see Bokuto and Atsumu there, in the doorway. They're way too early, but he'll be damned if he lets this sour his mood. Because Hinata just said yes. And he admitted to liking him _back_. It was like every candle he'd ever blown out and pretended to wish on had worked together to bless him today.

"Are you proposing? Where's the ring?"

"Of course he's not proposing!" For a moment though, Atsumu looks uncertain. "...Right?"

Hinata grins, but he doesn't direct it to the boys at the door. "Not _yet._ "

It's like a challenge. It chills him to the bone and warms his cheeks. Okay, Hinata- he'll accept. Sakusa stands up and brushes himself off, before walking over to begin his warm ups. The smile finds its own way onto his face.

"Yeah," he echoes. "Not yet."

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

**[I wanted to include this but it wouldn't fit into the story]**

"You know what, Hinata?" Atsumu laughs, ruffling his hair. "You're really cute." Sakusa tries not to let the irritation show on his face, but he's not sure it's working. Bokuto is snickering in the background, which is a pretty good sign that it's not.

"Oh! That reminds me!" His face suddenly turns serious and he gets a worrisome glint in his eyes. "You're gonna have to find a new nickname for Sakusa. I'm taking Omi-kun for _myself."_

The look on their setter's face is wonderful. It's blank shock, and as much as he tries to recover his dignity, it's not working. Bokuto seems to be working his way up from snickering to holding his hand over his mouth and going red so he doesn't burst out laughing- but it looks like his cheeks will burst first with all the air he's holding in. Sakusa hopes the spiker knows he can breathe in through his nose too.

"Oh- Okay, well, what about Kiyo-chan?"

Hinata considers it for a second. "No, that's too cute. I'm going to have to take that one too."

**Author's Note:**

> "Where do you want to get married?" Hinata asks, and Sakusa smiles softly at him. 
> 
> "The beach would be nice, I think."
> 
> Atsumu and Bokuto can't believe their ears. "The BEACH?" They cry. "You HATE the beach!"
> 
> He doesn't even bother to look at them. "And it has to be a sunset wedding. Maybe in Rio?"
> 
> His teammates keep yelling their complaints, but it's easy to block them out once you're used to it. Besides, he'd give anything for him to relive the first time that he fell in love with Hinata Shouyou.


End file.
